Tomorrow I leave for Mount Hermon. Mount Hermon is Christian-writer-speak shorthand for the Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference. It’s a bona fide big deal. It’s a place that makes me sigh into my mug and whisper maybe next year. But last November I entered this contest. And the contest sponsor created a second prize just so I wouldn’t walk off empty-handed. By the […]

The Ocean Calls Her Rivers Home. Oregon, 2014. Another Thin Place Does fresh water, running towards the sea, stretch a place thin*? I’ve written before (more than once) about Laity Lodge and the tranquility that inhabits the air on the campus along the banks of the Frio river. Last week, my husband and I visited Oregon to watch […]

Last weekend, an earnest, freckled Cub Scout approached me outside our grocery store and asked me to help with his food drive. He gave me a list of especially-needed food items for the food pantry at South County Outreach and invited me to fill up the special red plastic bag that marked “food drive food.” […]

It Started at Shipmates When I was a small child, my family worshiped at First Congregational UCC in San Bernardino. Our parents belonged to Shipmates, a couples’ fellowship. Many of my most enduring memories of that congregation stem from Shipmates-instigated activities. Notable among these events were Pal Week (a secret-friend type weeklong adventure that must remain […]

Cadence, Sawyer, Elaine: Group Hug Beyond Imagination We mourn together for lives cut short in an ugly blast of gunfire. One moment, twenty beautiful young students and the adults entrusted with their education were studying the chalkboard, perhaps, or bent over worksheets. And then suddenly, we were all robbed of their lives. A nation grieves […]

Meet Sheila

Sheila Seiler Lagrand, Ph.D., earned her doctorate in anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. As an undergraduate at the University of California, San Diego, she studied anthropology and literature with an emphasis in writing. But her dad would tell you that she's been writing since she was big enough to hold a pencil.
Sheila has contributed to several edited volumes. Her Christmas story, Kathi Macias' 12 Days of Christmas: Volume 8: Yankee Doodle Christmas, released in December of 2013. In October of 2014, her serialized novel, Remembering for Ruth, based on the characters of Yankee Doodle Christmas, released. Sheila also worked on a collaborative romance novel, The San Francisco Wedding Planner, just for fun. Her essay, "Strip Tease" appears in Soul Bare, edited by Cara Sexton and releasing in fall, 2016 from InterVarsity Press. Currently she is working on a book about family relationships across multiple generations.